Developers, please take note of Naughty Dog’s inclusion of women

The ideology that only certain subgenres of games appeal to women needs to radically change before we can begin to work on other sexist issues within our community.

Recently, I was picked to beta test a game, which I won’t mention, but I’ll just say that it looks like it will be a big up-and-coming title. When I was filling out the application, the thought that my gender could prevent me from earning the spot shouldn’t have even cross my mind. But it did.

As I was filling out the application, I thought about a story I had read last week in regard to Naughty Dog and their beta testers. The story originally appeared on the Escapists website, a popular video game magazine, on April 8. In a recent interview with Neil Druckmann, Creative Director for Naughty Dog, Druckmann told The Escapist they had to “specifically request” bringing women into the focus-testing group.

Druckmann told the Escapist he was surprised they had to demand female testers and hoped, “this was a relic of the past that would soon go away.” It won’t though, not any time soon. Video games are still seen as a very male-dominated industry, even though half of Canadian gamers are female.

It isn’t a new issue that has arisen overnight, but instead an issue we as a community have been sitting on, casually ignoring.

It reminds me of a panel I attended last summer on game development. There were a couple of instructors (who shall remain anonymous) from a prominent school talking about the urgent need to promote women developers in the industry. When asked why we’re not seeing more female developers already, one of the instructors responded by saying, “we can always use more My Little Pony games.”

I could tell you how outraged I was by this comment. I could tell you how disappointing it was to see a prominent instructor in Toronto make it. I could tell you he is one out of a handful who feel this way, but I would be lying. He is one of the hundreds who feel the same way, and that’s where the exclusion problem begins.

The Last Of Us is a beautiful looking video game.

The company who was running the focus group testing for The Last of Us thought the game wouldn’t appeal to a female audience, and to properly utilize the focus test, decided to exclude the female buyers.

I love first person shooters. I love time and emotionally invested adventure games. I love survival horror titles, and I am a woman. Most of the female friends I have would rather spend hours pummeling, or being pummelled, in Street Fighter.

The issue isn’t strictly a male or female issue, but a collective issue among the gaming community. There are days when I am incredibly proud to be a member of this prominent and ever expanding community, and there are days I am ashamed to say I am apart of it. We need to, collectively, eradicate these sub genres geared toward one gender because “focus group testing” and “marketing” thinks it’ll appeal to certain groups of people.

It’s great to see a video game developer approach this issue from a different perspective for a change.

I have never been as proud of a developer as I was of Naughty Dog in that moment. It’s a small step, but a step nonetheless, to tearing down these ridiculous invisible walls we’re continuously throwing up.

I would like to coexist in a world where games are geared toward gamers, not male players or female players. There will always be hiccups regarding issues where gender is brought up, but I think we are maturing as a community. It’s time to change it for the new clan of gamers coming up, and I challenge every other developer to grasp the hand Naughty Dog has outstretched, and cling to it for dear life.